Almost 39M Tune In for McCain Speech

Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) acceptance speech on the final night of the Republican National Convention Thursday was seen by 38.9 million viewers across the broadcast and cable networks, according to Nielsen Media Research.

That's a few hundred-thousand more than the 38.3 million who watched Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) deliver his acceptance speech one week earlier at the Democratic National Convention.

Once again, Fox News Channel reaped the lion's share of viewers, with 9.2 million watching McCain's speech on the network. That was more than CNN (4.8 million) and MSNBC (2.5 million) combined. In fact, nearly one-quarter of the 38.9 million viewers who tuned in from 10 p.m.-11:15 p.m. were watching Fox News.

It was the second night of record viewing for Fox News, with McCain's speech and that of his running mate, Sarah Palin, tied as the most-watched political-convention telecasts in Fox News and cable news history.

NBC News was the leader among the broadcast networks, attracting 8.7 million viewers from 10 p.m.-11:15 p.m., followed by ABC (6 million) and CBS (5.3 million).

Additionally, The O'Reilly Factor had its second-most-watched program ever Thursday with 6.68 million for Bill O'Reilly's interview with Obama. The biggest Factor audience was in March 2003, when 7.3 million viewers tuned in on the evening of President Bush's address about the invasion of Iraq.